Howe, E. (2009). Henry David Thoreau, Forest Succession, and The Nature of Science: A Method for Curriculum Development. The American Biology Teacher, 71(7), 397-404.
This article poses a way of teaching the History of Science in a way that students learn and understand the Nature of Science. In Phase 1, the teacher researches episodes in history to teach a concept in the curriculum. In Phase 2, the teacher forms guiding questions to explore the Nature of Science in the proposed episode. In instruction, the teacher has the students gain all of the necessary background information on the topic and historical episode. The students then participate in solving a problem related to the episode. Through argumentation, the students learn to evaluate and criticize. The next step in instruction is for the students to explore the historical episode against their own evaluations of the problem and compare them in the Nature of Science.
I feel that this method of curriculum development is beneficial in learning the Nature of Science tenets. It is also beneficial for students learning the history of science. By critically exploring the historical episode using the Nature of Science, students can better understand and learn the tenets. Rather that presenting the Nature of Science as facts, this method helps students commit the tenets to memory and have the ability to apply them in other areas of science. This method helps students think like Scientists, and this is key to understanding the tenets of the Nature of Science. This is also a better approach to the traditional method of teaching the History of Science. In my experience, the History of Science is presented with previous Scientists and their accomplishments all throughout history. It is simply presented as something with no connection to the concepts in the class or in a way that would explain the tenets of The Nature of Science.
On the negative side, this method requires a lot of time and research. It also requires a lot of fundamentals of background information for the students to be scaffolded into the hierarchy of higher levels of learning. This method may be harder in the middle school ages, as some students have not yet developed abstract reasoning at that age. It would also be helpful to tailor all instruction to complement the idea of critical reasoning, so that the students are familiar with the approach.
The Article in PDF below.
This article poses a way of teaching the History of Science in a way that students learn and understand the Nature of Science. In Phase 1, the teacher researches episodes in history to teach a concept in the curriculum. In Phase 2, the teacher forms guiding questions to explore the Nature of Science in the proposed episode. In instruction, the teacher has the students gain all of the necessary background information on the topic and historical episode. The students then participate in solving a problem related to the episode. Through argumentation, the students learn to evaluate and criticize. The next step in instruction is for the students to explore the historical episode against their own evaluations of the problem and compare them in the Nature of Science.
I feel that this method of curriculum development is beneficial in learning the Nature of Science tenets. It is also beneficial for students learning the history of science. By critically exploring the historical episode using the Nature of Science, students can better understand and learn the tenets. Rather that presenting the Nature of Science as facts, this method helps students commit the tenets to memory and have the ability to apply them in other areas of science. This method helps students think like Scientists, and this is key to understanding the tenets of the Nature of Science. This is also a better approach to the traditional method of teaching the History of Science. In my experience, the History of Science is presented with previous Scientists and their accomplishments all throughout history. It is simply presented as something with no connection to the concepts in the class or in a way that would explain the tenets of The Nature of Science.
On the negative side, this method requires a lot of time and research. It also requires a lot of fundamentals of background information for the students to be scaffolded into the hierarchy of higher levels of learning. This method may be harder in the middle school ages, as some students have not yet developed abstract reasoning at that age. It would also be helpful to tailor all instruction to complement the idea of critical reasoning, so that the students are familiar with the approach.
The Article in PDF below.